What we feel ought to be right is irrelevant. The universe is the way it is and it is our task to find out. We cannot go out and seek for justifications of our prejudices. And there is nothing inconsistent or ridiculous about an infinitely old and infintely large universe, any more than there is about having it inexplicably and miraculously have appeared from nothingness, and that there is a finite size to it beyond which nothing, not even vacuum, exists.

When I was a student the debate was still going on, and I wanted the steady state to be correct, it just seemed more reasonable and made more sense. I was an undergraduate when the predicted microwave background was first detected. The ratio of isotopic abundances and the discovery of distant quasars sealed it for me. I had been mistaken.

The Big Bang, Lemaitre's Cosmic Egg, the alphabetical heresy of Alpher, Bethe and Gamow (we called them alphabetagamma) seemed somehow inelegant and arbitrary. The observations led us to accept the hard truth that we were mistaken...at least, until better data comes along.

I still believe the universe to be finite in size and age, because the data supports it, not because I like it. There are three independent lines of evidence which converge to support this philosophically unsatifactory conclusion, but once they were explained to me, I had to concede. But if better information comes along I will reconsider.

What I find interesting is how our preferences, and apparently those of our generations, (yours for evolutionary, mine for steady state), came to be.